 Hi, welcome everyone to the Wednesday lunchtime seminar series, New Voices in Global Security. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Amanda Chisholm and I'm a senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies, the organizer and chair of this regular series. The series generally, the aims of it is to raise the voices and amplify the voices and expertise of our early career researchers across the school, as well as we have EDI cafe chats where we talk about various topics, a quality diversity and inclusion topics and interests to our students and academics across the school. So this in the spirit of an EDI chat, this is a collaboration today with WeWIP and it's on all about demystifying writing, academic writing particularly for people who, well anyone who struggles with the different types of writing academics are asked to perform themselves. So I'm so pleased to have WeWIP members here today. So we have Annie Garg and Annie right now is pursuing an MA in international relations. She earned her bachelor's degree in English literature and her growing interest in historical political mechanisms led her to pursue international relations, which allowed her to gain a more academic understanding of politics and power structures. As a result, she became intrigued by society's power and balances and stratification of discrimination. And at the moment, Annie is overjoyed to be at King's. Yay, Annie. We're grateful to have you here. Annie is a member of WeWIP team where she can put her passion for women's empowerment to work. And Annie also serves as one of WeWIP's blog editors this year. We're also joined by another WeWIP member, Aurora Pinnelli. And she's final year student in a double degree in European social and political studies between Saint Paul Paris and University College London. She spent her first two years focusing on Central and Eastern Europe where she majored in politics and government at UCL. She is majoring in philosophy in German. Aurora is also part of the Millennium Fellowship class 2021, a program part of the United Nations Academic Impact Initiative aiming at promoting social impact projects. And she's co-founder of the next chapter project taking place both in Palermo and in London and purporting the inclusion of young migrants in societies of first and second arrival. Fascinating work, both of you. You know, you're a testament to the amazing and brilliant scholarship and scholars that we attract here in war studies and at King's more broadly. So thank you for being here. For those of you who are unfamiliar with women and more in international politics, WeWIP, it's a network of women identifying gender queer, gender nonconforming and non-binary students, staff and alumni from across the faculty of social science and public policy at King's College London. The initiative seeks to support and increase the visibility of the peoples or persons rather working in the field of war studies and international politics, whether as students, researchers or practitioners and to showcase their work and their achievements. WeWIP also hopes to promote and encourage exploration of the question of gender and its implication in war, conflict, foreign policy and security practices. As such, WeWIP is a network for community building and event organizing. Again, so happy to have you here as part of the New Voices Seminar Series. Without further ado, actually, I'm now going to pass the floor over to Annie and Aurora, who will be chairs of this roundtable and will be introducing the speakers who have kindly agreed to share their expertise and insights into academic writing. So, Aurora and Annie, the floor is yours. Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. Let me start by introducing our panelist, Dr. Catherine Baker. She's a reader in 20th century history at the University of Hurl and has written or edited six academic books, most recently, Race and the Yugoslav Region, Post-Socialist, Post-Conflict, Post-Colonial and the edited volume, Making War on Bodies, Militarization, Aesthetics and Embodiment in International Politics. She often reviews proposals and typescripts for a number of UK, US and Canadian publishers, sits on three journals, editorial boards, and is a frequent peer reviewer for a wide range of journals, including Critical Military Studies, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Millennium and More. A very warm welcome to you, Dr. Catherine. Our next panelist is Lizzie Ellen. She's a communications manager for the School of Security Studies, King's College London. In this role, she manages public engagement and communication engagements, activities, including social media, media and PR, the website, events, podcasts, and videos across the school for studies and the Defence Studies Department. Prior to this, she held communication officer role in the Policy Institute, King's College London and at the University of Sheffield. Before working in higher education, Lizzie worked for Paul Bloomfield, MB. A very warm welcome to you. Thank you so much for this introduction, Annie. I'm going to pursue the introduction of the speakers now. So now I'm going to present Dr. Susan Martin. Dr. Martin is a senior lecturer in the World Studies Department of King's College London. In her work, she uses the international relations theory, particularly structural realism to analyze state policies on CBN weapons, deterrents and other types of coercive diplomacy and economic competition among states. Her work includes the articles The Future of Chemical Weapons, implications from the Syrian Civil War, with Joffrey Tempman and Hassan Abadmi. Norms military utility and the use, non-use of weapons, the case of anti-plant and irritant agents in the Vietnam War. The role of biological weapons in international politics, the real military revolution and the edited book Terrorism War or Disease Unrevealing in the Use of Biological Weapons with Annie Kluenan and Peter Lavoie. While continuing to work on the use of chemical weapons in Syria, she's also completing a book manuscript taboos or consequence, the role of normative and instrumental factors in US decision making on the use and non-use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. Amazing. Welcome, Dr. Martin. The next speaker that I'm going to present is Dr. Kiran Ful. Dr. Ful is a lecturer in international relations and the Department of World Studies of World Studies. Her research focuses on the politics of global knowledge production and the rise of data-driven practices like opinion pooling, which shapes how we understand and order the world. Having worked in both industry and academia, she has an experience of writing for different audience and navigating the rhetoric and expertise. Welcome, Dr. Ful. And then our last but not least speaker is Laura Zuber. Laura is a doctoral researcher at the World Studies Department at King's College London. She's investigating into the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK from critical perspectives. Her research interests are global political economy, decoloniality, feminist theory, and crisis management. Laura has received a BA degree in media and communication from the University of Vassau, Germany, and double master degree in MA, European Studies at the University of Vassau, and MA, English Studies, Intercultural and Multilingual Communication at the University of Maga in Spain. Welcome, Laura. Thank you so much, all of you for being here. Your experience will be super inspiring. And I look forward to have this conversation. That's why we're going to start by discussing the first question that we have prepared for this conference. So what is academic writing for you? And how is it different from other jobs of writing you engage with? Who would like to start? Maybe Dr. Ful, since you have a lot of experiences in academic writing and other kinds of writing? Sure. Yeah, I'd start. Thanks so much, Aurora. Yeah, it's a good question. What is academic writing and how is it different from other forms of writing? I definitely see it as a very specific form of self expression and rhetoric and argumentation. And I'm glad that, Amanda, you described it as performing. And I really do feel like academic writing is a bit of a performance. I think it has its own language and its own formalities and its own tone. But these things are always changing. They're always being renegotiated or broken down and built back up. I think academic writing is is always like intention because it tries to be clear and concise, but it's often obscure and very complex and wordy and can be inaccessible. But it sits within that tension because I think what I find is that it helps me sometimes, sometimes to dig deeper into ideas, right? I find the more that I read and write in the academic setting, the more I can understand or navigate complex ideas and complex terms. And I think that can be helpful sometimes for making sense of things. But I think I guess because it's a tension between these things, I find it both very constraining, but also freeing compared to other genres, both. I think if I compare it to like strategic writing, strategic documents and reports, it's both more constraining and more freeing, but in different ways. I certainly wouldn't call it my natural voice, that's for sure. Yeah. Thank you so much for your answer. It is very interesting to understand how academic writing can be constraining and freeing at the same time. Does anyone else have some insights to add at what Dr. Ful mentioned? Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I guess, for me, the central aim of sorry, for me, the central aim of academic writing is to make an argument, right? To answer a question or to solve a puzzle. And to do this effectively, you need a knowledge base. So you need good research where you're asking useful questions and gathering the best available evidence and critical thoughts. You really need to question and engage with your sources, but also with your own ideas. And I think it's, it's really important to realize that academic writing can't be separated from research. It's your analysis of your research that gives you something to say. And it's through that analysis that you develop and build the argument that you're trying to present in your writing. So one of the things I always stress, and which I always come back to in my own work is that research and writing are not separate activities, they're not sequential, where you first do your research and then you do your writing. But instead, writing is part of the analytic process. It's only when you get to when it's only when you start to try to put the words down on paper that you really start to process your research, you really start to think your ideas through. And as you do that, you develop new ideas, new questions, all of which lead you back to further research. Thank you so much, Dr. Martin, Martin, for your, your detailed explanation of how the role of research in developing puzzles and questions to answer. Dr. Baker, would you like to go next? Yeah, I love that we're all having such different answers to this question. And you know, that kind of silence there first was when, you know, you're asking us what is academic writing, and we all do so much of it. And none of us seem to immediately know what it is. And I think for me, one of the one of the first things I'd say it is, is, you know, academic writing is writing that has citations. It's accountable to where it got its sources from. And, you know, that's the case in terms of how integral it's linked to research. And we need to be able to, you know, show what we did and explain our methods, our positionality well enough that other people know if they can trust us or not. But you know, also in terms of our theoretical frameworks, you know, it's accountable in terms of citations there to, you know, you can trace what, you know, what the author themselves has built their thinking on. And, you know, I annoy editors a lot because I want to have, you know, very, very long bibliographers because I spend, you know, far too much time reading things that aren't connected to each other and then working out how do I fit. But, you know, for me, all of that's important to, you know, build into academic writing. And, you know, all the more so since, you know, I'm someone who is often writing about, you know, places and societies, which, you know, I'm not myself from. You know, I write a lot about post-Eucharist Arab region, I'm not from there in any, you know, in any sort of shape or form. So, you know, within that unequal politics of knowledge production, but unfortunately we're in and, you know, we need to be to be fighting against, you know, their two citation is all the more important. A lot of the rest of academic writing in terms of formats, you know, we could say is, you know, tradition or convention or gatekeeping or, you know, maybe even empire, if we're going to put it that way. And, you know, that is, you know, I think where it's so powerful when, you know, authors find ways to break those molds and still be able to get across the intellectual accountability and the complexity that, you know, really great academic writing might hold more space for than any other form. And, you know, I'll mention this may not be the first time some of you heard me talk about this this year. You know, Anna Akafanglu and LHM Ling's amazing book Transforming World Politics because of the way in which they managed to, you know, cut through all of the kind of conventions and the coloniality of, you know, formal academic writing in international relations and, you know, envision something that's, you know, much more intellectually expansive and hopefully emancipatory as a result. Thank you, Tobaker. Absolutely. Like, sources are crucial in order to make, to make academics accountable for their work, for their rights. And it is also related to what Dr. Martin was saying about the importance of research. So, Liti, would you like to add on this? Yeah, I mean, I guess I would, obviously, I'm coming at it from slightly different point of view, because I'm not an academic and I don't write in an academic way. In fact, I'm often sort of rallying against academics when they're writing for public audiences to tone down the academic ease in their prose. But kind of building on, I guess I would agree with Susan to an extent in that, you know, I think ultimately it's about communicating messages, it's about communicating research findings, which might be answering question, or providing more information or a new interpretation or a new analysis on an issue. And I think, you know, briefly, academics have a real space in public fears. Essentially, we obviously with the terrible war in Ukraine, it has generated a huge amount of interest in war security issues conflict. And we're getting a huge number of media requests coming to water these here for our experts to speak about these things and write about these things more importantly. And so, you know, journalists, commentators, politicians, they all rely on academics to fill that space of presenting, you know, in depth, in analysis, in depth, information, in depth, thoughts about situations that they can bring to the table that no one else has had time to do or time to look at. And they also, hopefully still in this day and age, people treat academics or expert's opinions with respect and feel that they are entrusted for. So they're really important to journalists and politicians who, you know, the public don't really trust as much. And so that's a really key and important part of academic writing. And I think it's something that, you know, people don't always, it's not always easy because you learn to write as an academic you, you know, train over so many years to write in this very dense and wordy and slightly esoteric way. And when it comes to communicating with public audiences, you have to turn all of that and strip all of that back and completely change reverse the way in which you write. So I think it's interesting at the heart of this is there's a kind of clash between, you know, the message and the wanting to communicate research findings and the tone and the register that you're using and the language that you're using to communicate those findings is, you know, often impenetrable and inaccessible for most audiences. But that's, you know, I'm not criticising that because obviously it's important to write in that in that way. I think it's just about just emphasising the need for us to for academics to be able to learn to write in more accessible ways as well and obviously work with our comms team and hopefully to do that because that's our job as well. Thank you so much, Lizzie. Laura, would you like to add on that? Yeah, thanks so much, Laura. Well, I think that I think that my response to the question would speak more to the members in the audience who may be new to the university and just started their studies. But I think, and I hope that everybody can take a little bit from it. So I think that, you know, what writing academically means has evolved a lot because I think that what academic knowledge for me means has evolved a lot alongside it. So firstly, when I was actually entering university and, you know, took my first academic books to hand, I thought that academia, and please don't judge me because that was a really long time ago and I was kind of naive. It was just about producing information, you know, plain and simple. And that, you know, that information would be produced in academia according to fixed rules and it would be neutral and mostly true. And that should be academic knowledge. So I had a very narrow image about it. And in terms of academic writing, you know, whenever I wrote something that, whenever I read something that was inaccessible and, you know, full with jargon that I didn't understand, that was a signal for me that it was good academic writing. So everything I didn't quite understand sounded very smart. So there was a little bit of imposter syndrome in that, you know. And so today, yeah, it's obviously I think that it's less about producing information plain and simple, just for the sake of it. But more, you know, I can echo Dr. Martin, it is about reflection, it is about developing your arguments. You know, now I'm thinking about academic writing in kind of an art of expressing your thoughts and your your your reflection as a journey as, you know, accessibly and concisely and precisely as possible. I needed to share that reflection with the readers in a yeah, in an accessible way. Say, by like, you know, and I think that that is what is for me academic writing. But also through engaging especially within a feminist and critical theories. My idea has also significantly broadened, you know, now I think that, you know, using the first person or also there are so many more experiential academic genres, like, you know, pumps, for instance, that's also part of it for me. So I guess that in my academic writing, when I think about it today, what I can say about it is that a lot of people have appeared of it in it. So I have appeared as the first person and the reader has appeared. And obviously, all the authors that I'm drawing on in my literature have appeared. And nowadays, I like to think about academic writing more as a conversation. Because I think that academic knowledge is a relational and a communal project. And, you know, I can I conduct a baker here that there is definitely a politics into that conversation and the power politics. So yeah, I think that it's really fascinating to hear all the replies and how different they are. I think that, for me, the answer to what academic writing is and how this should be done, I think that depends a lot on our, you know, idea on what on what constitutes academic knowledge. Yeah. Thank you so much, Laura. This question was super insightful. We had an understanding of the importance of academic writing in relation to research, to sources. At the same time, academic writing as a way to free himself for himself. And also the role of academic writing in politics and the understanding of the words from the authorises. So it was very, very interesting. And that's why now we're going to I think the next question is going to be it's going to add on the conversation we've just had. And I'm leaving the floor to Annie to start discussing the next question. Thank you so much, Aurora. And it was lovely to hear about what academic writing is. Now to take this conversation a little further, I want to focus upon writer's block. Like while we're writing academic writing, there's always a stuck of thoughts where we feel very difficult to move forward. So my question on the floor is like, have you ever experienced writer's block? If yes, what was it like for you? And can you give us a tip on how to deal with it? If not writer's block, are there any other challenges relevant for you that you would like to talk about? Maybe Dr. Martin, would you like to Sure. So I'm not sure I've had what I think of as writer's block, which is sitting down at the computer and having nothing to say. But there are certainly lots of other obstacles to writing, many of which I experience on a daily or weekly or an hourly basis. One is making time to write and staying focused during that time. And I think one of the things that we started doing in war studies under Amanda's tutelage is setting aside actual focus time for writing, writing in 45 minutes sprints. So you turn everything off, you write for 45 minutes, and then you take a break, and then you come back to it. And that helps. But there are lots of different kinds of tricks and tips here. And I think it just, you just have to find what works for you. And you have to remember that what works one day won't necessarily work the next. So you need a whole bag of tricks so that you can try different things when you're stuck. I think the other thing is that as I was saying before, it's actually the process of trying to write where you figure out what you're trying to say. So if you don't know what you're gonna say and you feel stuck because you don't know what you want to say, you just have to start trying to put the words on the paper. The flip side of that is that sometimes, you know, one of the best parts of academic research and writing is you have that light bulb moment where you have this really great idea, right? And you're really excited about that idea. But getting, I mean, but then there's the real work begins, which is getting that on paper. And that can be a real slog, right? It can be really hard to try to force those words out to communicate that great idea that you've had. And that's just the slog that is involved in any sort of writing, I think it's the hard work. And you just have to the only way to get through it is to do it. So I'll stop there and let other people chip in. Well, I think that it's a wonderful advice to sit there for like 45 minutes straight and then write because it's going to be like the whole thoughts would be there for whole 45 minutes. Anybody here would like to add more to this? Yes. Gatsby. Yeah, I mean, I used to be in a position where, you know, very fortunately, I could have said it's not really something I had to cope with. But, you know, it is something I'm having to cope with now and possibly finding it more difficult, because I've got this file without it having been that much of a problem so far. But, you know, essentially, I've, you know, for a lot of different reasons, lost a lot of the kinds of sources of identity and energy that, you know, used to make me feel like I've got a place to speak from and that people would be interested and that I would feel safe in doing that. So, you know, that just kind of raises the stakes of everything I need to be doing, at the same time as the actual immersive time that I'm able to get for, you know, getting writing done or even that kind of initial thinking process, you know, is also for various reasons, a lot more constrained than it was. And I mean, I don't know if I'm dealing with it particularly well compared to, you know, maybe people for whom it's always been a struggle. I think one of the, one of the things I have kind of managed to do is I have to catch a point where my feelings about disappointing someone actually become worse than my feelings about doing work. So, I mean, you know, for instance, there's a piece I recently contributed to a forum on race and racism and security dialogue, for instance. And, you know, that was the most difficult thing I've had to get into recently by any means compared to some of them. But, you know, if, you know, everything that I write, you know, going back a long time, really, I tend to have, you know, an idea of, okay, who am I actually writing this for? You know, we were talked already about academic writing being a conversation. And, okay, well, who am I writing this for? Who would it benefit? You know, that probably when I started out was, you know, or for so I hadn't met yet, but my work was in conversation with, you know, now it might well actually be people I know. So, you know, when I was writing this particular piece, and it was on contingent whiteness in central and eastern Europe, you know, as well as the fact that, you know, if I don't do this, what we had to think, you know, I was also very conscious that, you know, these are things which Amanda and I have talked about, for instance, I thought, okay, well, I want to write this so that, you know, Amanda can actually cite it in something which she's doing. And, you know, then the conversation goes on. So, yeah, I think maybe the way that I've been trying to get through writer's block is, you know, just kind of narrowing down and personalising my sense of, you know, what am I doing? Who am I writing this for? And maybe that kind of helps me find the mutuality that we want there to be in, you know, good and meaningful academic writing, I hope so. But, you know, I am probably not the person who is dealing with writer's block best of elements. I think that was also very lovely advice. Lizzie, would you like to add something to this? Yeah, I mean, I'd say, obviously I'm not writing lengthy academic texts, you know, I haven't written anything for a long since my 600k dissertation at university. But I'm having to write very short, concise focus pieces where I'm disseminating people's work on issues. And that can be a challenge in itself to sort of condense things down and cut down on detail. But, you know, whenever I get started on something, it's whenever I have to do any writing it's always just hanging over me as a cloud. And I find that you can't force yourself to do it if you're not in the right frame of mind. So for me, I always make sure that I set aside, you know, rather than having a focus for 45 minutes, I prefer to have a good kind of morning or afternoon where I can just get completely into it and not have to think about anything else. And I can turn emails off and that kind of thing. And I tend to do it on a day I know that I'm going to be more productive. So not on Monday and not on Friday. So not working against yourself but working with yourself and knowing when you're going to be more likely to work productively. But the biggest thing I'd say is, you know, I think we're held back a lot of the time from this kind of perfectionism and the fear of failure. That when we start writing, we don't know how to say things, you know, we'll get lost, we'll do a rubbish version. And I'd say the first time that you write a draft, then it probably will be rubbish because ultimately writing isn't just about the first go, it's about refining, the editing down, changing structure, that sort of thing, working through several versions. So I'd say, you know, don't let the fear of failure or perfectionism hold you back, just start writing something down, even if it's complete garbage and rubbish. And you might do a really poor first attempt, but it'll be on this, you know, second version or the third version, it already starts to refine your language and the points that you're making. And you'll start to turn it into something that you feel proud of. And that I guess would be my main tip when it comes to writing for Rock. Yes, I think like, as Dr. Martin said that the first thing it is to sit down and do it. I think that that really works. Thank you, Lizzie. Lauren, Laura, Laura, would you like to add to this? I guess I I mean, I think I did, I did experience writer's block a couple of times. If you know, if you mean by writer's block, you know, just just sitting in front of the screen and just tearing at the screen for for hours and just not really be able to bring anything to paper. So I think, yeah, I definitely have experienced that in my life. And actually, when I did say it had to do with mainly three things. And the first things was that first thing was actually easiest to deal with. So that's when, you know, maybe maybe you have your insecure about your writing style, that was especially the case when I started in university. So, yeah, I think that, you know, when you're insecure about your writing style and feel that that that's why you cannot buy you have a writer's block, you know, as well, it's just practice, just going writing and also there are great workshops, actually, by the college that that has that have helped me to build a confidence in my writing style. And so the second thing was when it's not about your writing style, but you really you feel like you cannot really say much about your topic, right? There is also again, a little bit of imposter syndrome in there. And, you know, I think that once you have read two or three papers or five, you are able to write to start writing on them and just make a first draft. And, you know, you can revisit that draft. That is actually something I think I even heard that suggestion in in one of the workshops I visited. And, yeah, by coming back to the draft, you can just go on reading, reading more broadly. So that's, yeah, that's when kind of academic writing really is, you know, it's a it's a it's a it's a work in progress. And, yeah, the third, the third course, while by I ruffled with with writers block sometimes had either to do with my writing style nor, you know, my confidence about having something to stay. But it was more had to do with, you know, what's going on backstage in your life. Right. I think that most of us have at some point in their lives grappled with anxiety, feeling, you know, just insecurity. And a lot of problems just, you know, for instance, maybe going through grief and loss and, you know, all the bad things that, you know, that can happen to you backstage, that can happen between the lines, literally. And say, it is very, very difficult to say, you know, anything about how to remedy that. In my experience, what has helped is obviously, working twice changing the circumstances, that that may be that may be feel unwell and unbad. And that's obviously a process that that can take a it's strenuous and it can take a long, a long time. And yeah, on the on the short term, what has what has always helped me was just to make kind of an inventory of everything I'm happy about everything that is going well. And to just kind of hold on to that, you know, be be the family member or community or whatever it can be. And just, you know, tap more into your sources of faith and energy. And that mostly always, you know, helped me to to overcome writer's block and, you know, when it was more most acute. Yeah, but I think that writer's block and how to overcome it, I think it depends on on what causes it, right? And it's, first of all, you know, difficult to actually figure out why why you have a writer writer writer's block and then it's depending on the cause, it might be also very difficult to overcome. But well, just to give a little bit of hope, I have so far always managed to overcome it. So, yeah. Thank you for your lovely insights, Laura. Kieran, would you like to add something? Sure. So I don't know, maybe a bit candidly, I can say, I think I suffer from a minor form of writer's block all the time. But it has to do with the way I think that I write and also it links to often confidence, how confident you're feeling in your ideas, like what Laura's saying around anxiety and imposter syndrome, things like that. But what I've noticed, like I pay attention to sort of what what writing makes me feel at different points through the writing process. For me, the hardest part is usually getting started on something new. It's like the blank page that is the most daunting. And I think that's when it usually hits. And it's because for me, I tend, I write in a probably to my detriment, I don't tend to be a draft writer. I don't find it helpful to draft something and come back to it later, because I find I change my mind completely and I don't like it. I tear it up. So I have to be very kind of OK and at peace with what I'm about to do. And then I write something, sort of start to finish, look at it and see how I feel. And that's a bit strange. But I don't know, it's just how I train to write. What helps me to overcome it is firstly knowing when when I face a blank page, I that like what's happening there, that kind of relationship, what's going on between me and writing and to also do things, I create an outline, always relying on outlines of what I'm about to to say or draft or structures. I have lots of pieces of papers and whiteboards where I write things as an outline just to help myself get started. And sometimes I don't know even if I'm like walking or on the tube and then idea comes to me about what I could write or how I could write. I jot that down on my phones or write it down. So I don't forget. But I think maybe to link back to something that Catherine said, I always find that especially when it's tied to your career or your academics, writing tends to be for something and someone I don't always feel like when I'm writing in this academic way that it's for me as much as it is for something an audience out there. And I think that navigating that probably better than I do would help to ease with the writer's block or or the fear of getting started. Thank you, Kiran. It was lovely to hear a thing. I think I think most of our participants here would be feeling the same kind of a blockage while writing it. And thank you so much. I want to leave the floor open to Aurora. Yeah, thank you. And thank you, everyone for all your insights and the way you fight blockage. But at the same time, how you managed to keep the confidence and to navigate this. Yeah, your challenges and talking about challenges before moving on in the Q&A, one of the questions that we wanted to ask as we are also members of VIVIP is like in your experience, do you think that gender matters in fighting in finding your academic voice? So while we talk about challenges in general, but what's the role of gender in the challenges and the you that you face and how contributes to you finding your academic voice? So Laura, would you like to start? Yeah, I can say a little bit on that, but I was also wondering if maybe maybe it would make sense to leave that for after the Q&A. I don't know. Maybe the audience would like to chime in with some questions. It's how you prepare, really. Yeah, sure. We can also start with with the Q&A. So we had a question for Lidzi. So discussing the style, the the academic style when writing for nonacademic audience, how do you suggest academic tone down the writing style to make content more accessible to wider audience from Clara? I don't know if Lidzi can reply. Otherwise. Otherwise, if anyone else has a question and the Q&A, you can also either write in the chat or jump in. So it seems like maybe we have to leave a little bit of time to the audience to write their questions. Or if any of you would like to start by talking about the role of gender in your academic, in your challenges, that you find in your job. Or Lidzi, there was a question for you. Would you like to answer? Yeah, I was just completely distracted by something going across in the water and maybe not things that are right. But yeah, what was it? Sorry. No problem. Your question was a question from Clara saying when writing for nonacademic audience, how do you suggest academic tone down the writing style to make content more accessible to wider audiences? I guess the one thing that you learn often when you're writing for the media is the sort of pub conversation trick. So if you were talking to your friends in the pub and you didn't want to bore them for hours and hours and hours by talking about your academic research, how would you condense what you're working on or what you want to communicate, a paper or a general article or something into a pissy phrase or something that you would then use to explain to your friends or your mum or something. And that's where you start because that's your main argument. So when it comes to communicating, if you're doing press release, for example, and also a common piece to some extent as well is you front load the information to start with the core argument, you don't build up to it. So academic writing, you'd normally do a long preamble and you'd sort of give all the context, the background, and then you wouldn't really get to the main points until, you know, the second half of whatever you're writing, generally the conclusion towards the end. So it's the opposite of that. Basically, you're going straight in and saying, this is what I've found out, or this is what I think about something. And then you're providing the evidence and the context to back that up afterwards. And I'd say, you know, depending on whatever it is you're communicating, you know, you want to be you want to have that one main argument and then you have three or four key points, evidence, back up as well, that you bring to illustrate that point. But yeah, I mean, if you do some guides and things, if anyone's ever wanting to work on anything like this, we do support the work of PGRs, ECR, early career researchers. Sometimes they may students right for this as well. So we do help support with editing and everything. Thank you so much, let's see, for your insights about how to to like, create a language that is easier to understand for everyone when writing academic style. So if anyone else has a question, you can either write, Clara is thanking you. So you can either write in the chat or or you can also talk, we can give you the the floor. So yeah, feel free to ask the whatever question you would have. Seems like oh, yeah. Okay, perfect. Zuzia, Zuzia, he's asking, how do you all try and maintain a truthfulness in your writing? My difficulty when writing is continuing to question my stance when I'm already quite entrenched in the writing and not failing back on an answer that comes too easily. Does anyone have methods to reengage questioning later on in the process? So who is there anyone that has particular insights or maybe okay, Dr Baker, the floor is yours. Yeah, just seeing that question, I think maybe one thing you could try is externalizing it a little bit. So, you know, I mean, if I want to open up a critical perspective in something I'm writing, one thing that I might do is think, okay, well, what would so and so think? And, you know, so and so is an author from a different approach and the discipline or a different discipline altogether, or, you know, somebody I know would take a more critical or even oppositional stance towards the thing that I'm arguing. And, you know, so then how would I satisfy that person and that objection that they might have in that argument? So, you know, it would be less about, you know, me needing to come back in and questioning question it, you know, more making the move of, okay, well, how do I outsource that questioning to, you know, this imagined other person and then resolve that within the item? Thank you, Dr. Baker. Um, yeah, go Dr. Martin. Yeah, I mean, another simple trick I think is just to put it away for a little bit. So to take a break from it so that you can come back to it with fresh eyes. Um, I mean, I think, I think sometimes we're aware the weaknesses of our argument more than our readers will ever be, right? Because we spent so long thinking about it. Um, and in some sense, it's trying to, I think, uh, Catherine's advice about, you know, what are the main counterarguments that somebody else would make helps to focus us on the, on the important weaknesses that we can address. Um, but I think it's important to at least acknowledge, you know, the weaknesses that we see as well as that other people will see. You can't necessarily solve everything, but if you're at least honest about what weaknesses are there and what might be done in the future to address those gaps, that's another way of engaging critically with your argument. Thank you so much, Dr. Martin. Uh, Laura, the floor is yours if you want to add on what Dr. Baker and Dr. Martin have already said. Uh, you're muted. Sorry. Um, yeah, I don't know how much I can add to that, but, um, say it happened to me in my PhD process that I'm kind of changing or rephrasing my question, right? And that is precisely because, you know, I'm, I'm engaging more and more with, with, with the literature for my thesis. And I think that's natural. I think that's just a natural process. Um, and, um, you know, I think that your, um, your question refers to, you know, what, what, what if I change my question? Um, you know, the night, you know, if I, if I change my question in a later phase, I have to rewrite the whole thing, uh, but, but you don't have to. First of all, um, it's always good to be honest. Um, it's good, you know, to communicate to Rita while, um, you know, that, that question, my question that I'm grappling with, that I aim to solve, um, and answer, um, or discuss in these, uh, you know, um, thesis or, um, or dissertation, um, has evolved and then just, just tell a little bit about, about your story, about the journey and then, um, you don't need to rewrite everything. Um, you know, you're, you're still, you know, the question that has evolved from your first one is still, still in the same topic, right? It's, uh, it's not like you, you just ask something like completely different. Um, so you can use, I think mostly, much more than you think from what you have already previously written, um, and thought, and thought about. So, um, I think that, um, that's just, you know, questioning your stance and questioning, questioning your question, um, uh, is not just a natural process, but it's also a good thing. It's, it's, you know, it shows that you're, that you're engaging and that you're reflecting and reflecting critically. Um, so yeah, I, it's always, it's always best, you know, if you have a question in the beginning, um, and then that's how, that's what it stays. Um, and that question you just answer in the end. I mean, that, that makes things say, well, say much easier for you, right? Uh, but, um, it's, it's, it's not a bad thing, you know, to, to be critical also with, with yourself and with the perspective that you have entered into your research. Um, so yeah, I then, I think don't worry about that too much. Thank you for Laura for framing these challenges as, uh, a source of, uh, development. Um, and so if we still have time for at least one more question. So if anyone else would like to ask something else, you can even jumping or write your questions in the chat. Um, or if anything, anyone else has something to add, um, for the question you could also jump in. Um, so other, yeah, Dr. Martin. No. So just quickly on, on, I had a couple of thoughts on, on the gender question, which are sort of tying to think other things people were saying earlier. Um, so I'm not sure how much this is about gender, but I think it's related. One is that, I mean, finding your academic voice, good academic writing takes practice, right? And some people will show up to university and have had lots of practice in secondary school doing this sort of work. And some people won't. And no matter, no matter what stage you are, no matter how many years you've been writing, you're still practicing and you're still learning. So that, that learning curve is constant. And so I guess just stick with it, I guess would be one piece of advice, right? And take the opportunities for practice, seek out opportunities for practice. The other thing is that I think this came up in the discussion of writing in of writing block is that academic writing is authoritative writing, right? When you present an academic argument, you're making a claim to being an authority on the subject that you're writing about, as well as acclaimed the value of your thoughts and arguments on that subject. And that's where imposter syndrome comes in, that's where self confidence or a lack of self confidence can really undermine us. And I think not all of us grow up in an environment where the value of our views on the world is affirmed, where we're encouraged to question existing arguments, and where we get practice constructing our own arguments. And again, you just have to be comfortable doing that. And I mean, you can see it. I mean, so, you know, one easy way to see this, right, is when you're looking at an essay and the number of times you're quoting, as opposed to the number of times when you're putting things into your own words. And it's that that confidence of being able to paraphrase and being able to express your own thoughts on the subject instead of just relying on what other people have said, that that is a crucial step in developing your academic voice. Thank you so much, Dr. Martin, Dr. Baker, sorry, the floor is yours. Yeah, I mean, really just to back up what what Susan said about the, you know, how gendered or, you know, how gendered this question of authority is. And, you know, this is all the more so, of course, you know, when we're working as, you know, we all, you know, we all are here in, you know, a field which has such a history as a a masculinist discipline and, you know, a discipline where basically, you know, white men get round a table and discuss, you know, what of the, you know, discuss what, you know, what what what are the best best ways of making war in a way that, you know, really still keeps, you know, their countries and what they see a civilization out on top. I mean, you know, that's, you know, obviously I'm giving quite a, you know, a partial account of the history of history of war starters. There is, you know, you could see it in other ways as well. But in terms of, you know, what has created the hierarchies of, you know, what counts as unquestioned authority and, you know, where have people still got to try and feel, feel like, feel like they're breaking in, you know, that history is there. So, you know, everything we've gone through as, you know, gendered experiences, you know, inside and outside our discipline in intersection with the other ways in which we fit or don't fit. So, you know, clear, clearly, of course, we've got to take race as just as constituted there. And, you know, it's worth giving, you know, ability and disability, you know, quite a bit of consideration as well, because, you know, that affects, you know, how we each process and how we each its best things. But, you know, all of those then, you know, affect what platform we even believe we have when we start writing, you know, on top of, you know, then how do other people react to our claims to a party because of the, you know, because of the embodied selves that we each bring to make that claim. Thank you so much, Dr. Baker, Baker, the third full, would you like to go? And just make one small point to link back to citations and how so much of academic writing is about this conversation with others who write in the field or have written. The point is that also so much of what we read shapes our academic voice, sometimes in ways without us even really realizing it. And so reading, reading and what we read tells us a lot about what we and how we write. And so like as, you know, one example when I was growing up, I went through a small phase where I was sort of obsessed with English literature, classical literature, which is mostly written by a dead man. And I would often read it in their voice. And I thinking through the fiction and nonfiction that I read growing up, a lot of it was in it was written by men and I was reading it in their voice. Now, the more we read and the more broadly we read across different voices, that will again shape our writing in such implicit ways, but also open up our our mind to. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just a very important thing to to reflect on what we read as we reflect on how we write. Thanks. No, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Like listening different voices for sure, like shapes the perspective, the perspectives and the way these perspectives are also expressed in the first place. Maybe Laura, you would, we have, we don't have and a lot of time left. So if you have like final remarks that you would like to give. Otherwise, I will thank you all for your participation and for your insights and for having given to all our audience of your perspective on challenges not on academic of academic writing, but at the same time, it's like the creativity and how like intellectually stimulating academic writing is. It was a pleasure to be here. Also, thank you for giving us opportunity to moderate this conversation. And yeah, and I hope all of you will have a beautiful day. And thank you, Kiran, Katrin, Annie, Laura, Susan, Amanda, and it's for being there from being here today. So yeah, I think I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. And yeah, I'll see you soon in the next event. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.